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martinh

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About martinh

  • Birthday 05/15/1959

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    Tulsa, Oklahoma
  1. Brian Eno and Harold Budd - The Pearl. Not too rock 'n' roll I'll admit.
  2. Giver the information about the "pinging" while tuning, I'd bet this is a classic issue of strings sticking in the nut. Do a couple of things to check this: [1] tune the G and B strings to pitch using a tuner [2] play a couple of bend licks on the G ONLY, bend towards the bottom E, don't touch the B [3] check the open tuning of the G and B again If the G AND B are BOTH out of tune, the most likely possibility is that the bridge is shifting, or the entire neck is moving somehow If only the G has changed tuning, then the tension on the string has changed. Assuming the string is properly stretched to begin with, there are only two possible reasons [1] the tuning head has let more string unwind from the shaft. In this case, the string will go flat. A tuning head cannot, IMO spontaneously wind MORE string onto the shaft to make a note go sharp. This "slippage" is generally not a defect in the head, although it is often identifed as such. It is often caused by one of two things. the first is Insufficent string wound onto the shaft itself ,or wound on without the required one loop above the hole and all the others below ,allowing the string to slip round the tuner shaft. If your strings were changed by a luthier, this shouldn't be a problem. The second is the behevior of tuning "down" to the correct pitch, instead of "up" to the correct pitch. If you are tuning and go too high in pitch, always go back down below the correct pitch and then back up. That way, the worm gear on the head is resting firmly on the gear at the bottom of the shaft. [2] the most likey reason is that the string is sticking in the nut. if the nut is too narrrow, or 'V' shaped at the base of the slot, no amount of lubrication will stop it from grabbing the string. IMO a good nut slot has a nice curved bottom and is polished until it's shiny. This can be done with abrasive cord, or string soaked in a mild abrasive. A good luthier should know how to do this.
  3. Hello Graham (and or his cat) The secret to amassing such a collection is to have abasement studio inhabited by large black spiders. They guard the gear by stopping the womenfolk from venturing downstairs and counting the number of instruments

  4. Hi Martin, I'd imagine many players would enjoying being an attorney providing they'd be able to bring their guitars along!

    I'm new here and taking a random pick noticed your profile, with that white hat and all!

    Quite a guitar collection, even a Moog! My wife would never let me get away with that, but it doesn't stop me trying ;-)

    Regards G

  5. Chemical strippers are generally not very effective against nitro, or rattle-can automotive finishes, although they do ok against Krylon and similar hardware store paint. I have striped 10+ bodies, and I generally use a heat gun and scraper. You have to remove all the hardware from the body, and do this in a garage or similar place where glops of hot sticky paint hitting the floor are not a problem. Always keep a spray bottle of water handy in case you overheat the paint and it catches fire. Don’t get impatient and press the scraper too hard. . It takes 10 seconds to make a gouge, and half an hour to fill it or sand out. I can usually get 95% of a finish off with the gun and scraper, and then I use fine sandpaper and/or lacquer thinner to remove the rest. If you have no experience of spraying, the best thing to do once you have a clean body is to sand it with the finest grit paper you can find until it feels very smooth, then use a rub-on sealer and leave the body in a natural matt finish. This covers a lot of small imperfections. Under no circumstances spray it with any of the paint you find in hardware stores. That stuff never gets hard enough to provide a durable finish.
  6. I understand the dilemma. I started playing in my teens, and spent several years terrified of making any adjustment to my instrument in case I messed it up in some way. I finally bit the bullet and started to learn how to basic adjustments (bridge, intonation, truss-rod). When you understand how these components interact, the frustration and the fear evaporate. Further, you realize than many things that you thought were fundamental differences between two instruments are merely a matter of adjustment, and you can get an instrument to feel good to you, which is not necessarily what feels good to another player or the person who set it up at the factory. Like many posters, I would recommend Dan Earlwine's guitar repair book. It explains basic guitar set-up very nicely. If you're really worried about you instrument, buy a cheap "yard sale special" and practice adjustments on it untill you feel you have the technique down.
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